Johns
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from John
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dʒɑnz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Johns is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common surname.
- NLNetherlands1 in 353K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 165as Jones
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 231as Jones
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Johns itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #41 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 681 (measured from records)
- 1 in 353K (inferred from the name graph)
1,425,470 named Jones, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Jones in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 6 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
patronymic from John. As a German name it may also be a reduced form of Johannes.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Johns counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #4 | 1,425,470as Jones | 1 in 233 | 1.4M | Jones | 681 |
| GB United Kingdom | #2 | ≈400,000 est. | ≈1 in 165 | — | Jones | 420 |
| EG Egypt | #190 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 694 | — | Jones | 36 |
| CA Canada | #5 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 310 | 11 | Jones | 331 |
| IT Italy | #4 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 543 | — | Jones | 121 |
| AU Australia | #2 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 254 | — | Jones | 335 |
| NZ New Zealand | #3 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 231 | — | Jones | 200 |
| IS Iceland | #12 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 270 | 1 | Jones | 43 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 49 | 1 in 353K | 53 | Jones | 136 |
1,425,470 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Johns is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Americanized form of Swiss German Schantz.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, An English surname originating as a patronymic derived from John.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son of John’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In German, Patronym zu Johannes/John; im Großraum Hamburg sowie in den Räumen Husum und Braunschweig konzentriert.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, Patronym zu Rufname Johannes; 679 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Mervyn Johnsb. 1899GBWelsh actor (1899–1992)
- Helen Johnsb. 1914USAmerican swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, former world record-holder (1914-2014)
- Glynis Johnsb. 1923GBBritish actress (1923–2024)
- Jasper Johnsb. 1930USAmerican painter and sculptor (1930)
- Glyn Johnsb. 1942GBEnglish musician, recording engineer and record producer
- Patty Murrayb. 1950USnot in their usual nameUnited States Senator from Washington since 2013
- Andy Johnsb. 1952GBBritish record producer and engineer (1950–2013)
- Andrew Johnsb. 1974AUAustralian rugby league footballer
- Daniel Johnsb. 1979AUAustralian musician
- Harris Johnsb. 2000DEGerman record producer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 41 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 47K | #656 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 47K | #739 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 46K | #735 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 49 | #31,301 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Johns come from?
- patronymic from John. As a German name it may also be a reduced form of Johannes. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Johns?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɑnz/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Johns mean?
- Recorded meaning: patronymic from John.
- In which country does Johns have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 million people named Jones, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Johns most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Johns is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 353 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Johns?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 49 people named Johns in 2007, about 1 in 353 thousand residents.
- How common is Johns compared with other names?
- In the United States, Johns is the 4th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Johns?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/johnsThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Johns” — the 4th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.